As integrated circuits increase in size and complexity, dissipating the increasing amount of heat being generated by these integrated circuits is critical. As the high end for thermal solutions increases, so does the size of the cooling systems used to provide such thermal solutions. Unfortunately, larger cooling systems include more mass. Where a thermal interface is necessary, mounting such a cooling system becomes more challenging and often leads to damage of the cooling system or surrounding components, including the integrated circuit to be cooled.
Further, when a heat exchanger is attached to a heat source via a thermal interface material, the thermal resistance of the thermal interface material contributes to the overall thermal resistance. Wide variations in the values of the thermal interface material resistance can exist.
Non-uniform thickness of the thermal interface material often result due to the mounting process, thereby resulting in a non-uniform thermal resistance across the thermal interface. If a uni-directional force is used to engage the heat exchanger to the heat source, any non-parallel configuration or alignment of either mating surface will result in an uneven thermal interface between the two.
In a related issue, many heat sources are positioned relatively closely to each other. Attaching a heat exchanger to each heat source requires a mounting mechanism to be used on each heat exchanger. In some configurations, if two adjacent heat sources are too close together, there is not enough space for two corresponding mounting mechanism to also be attached. In such situations, a trade-off is required where a first heat exchanger is mounted using a first type of mounting mechanism, but a second adjacent heat exchanger is mounted using a second type of mounting mechanism, which is often less effective or convenient. For example, the second heat exchanger may be adhered directly to the heat source, which eliminates the ability to easily remove the heat exchanger, and can result in a thermal interface with different thermal characteristics than those resulting from the first type of mounting mechanism.
There is therefore a need for a more effective mounting or joining mechanism to provide a thermal interface between a cooling system and a heat source. There is also a need for a more effective mounting or joining mechanism to provide thermal interfaces between multiple cooling systems and multiple heat sources.